


Tears Into Brandy

by atlas_white



Series: Visions From Night Vale [1]
Category: Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: Angst, Cecil is albinistic, Drunkenness, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Pizza makes everything better, Unrequited, Unrequited Crush
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-17
Updated: 2018-07-17
Packaged: 2019-06-12 00:51:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 804
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15328101
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/atlas_white/pseuds/atlas_white
Summary: In the year that Cecil graduated college (although he cannot remember which year that was), Cecil is vulnerable after his heart gets broken by the first guy he was ever with. Earl does not take advantage.





	Tears Into Brandy

The first guy Cecil Palmer was ever with broke his heart. This happened the same year that he graduated college (he doesn't know when that was, but he knows this, and it grounds him in a way he can't explain), which was also the same year he first started dating that guy.

He has always had a way of wearing his heart on his sleeve, letting the delicate fabric get caught and snagged on things, on men like boys with their lives in front of them and no time for the present. It's easy to get your heart broken when you always leave it out and you're always looking for somebody to help you in all the wrong people.

This guy was no different, his name unimportant, his face a blurry memory. He's the smug twenty-something in college, older than Cecil, a few of the same classes but which ones are just as forgotten. The too easy smile and too much satisfaction with his every accomplishment, a hand on Cecil's hip that was enough back then to make him melt into pliable forms.

Cecil had dated here and there but he wasn't ready for him, was barely ready to have that part of himself taken or changed or rewritten, to lose the status too prized and named of having never before been in anyone's bed. He was broken up when the guy left, breezed out of his life because college was over and so was his interest in Cecil.

Too pale, too simple, built too wrong, Cecil told himself. Did the guy tell him that? He couldn't even remember that night, because he was so distraught; red-faced and white-haired and crying into brandy that was twice his own age. It was how his dorm-mate found him when he got back from wherever he'd been, following the noise until he found the lump of distraught blanket that concealed a young man who did not yet properly know how to navigate the world, even having been to other countries by himself.

― ☾ ―

So his dorm-mate, who was Earl Harlan, sat next to the distraught blanket and talked to it for an hour until it got too hot and the top part slid down and showed this disheveled young man, barely a man, drunk and heartbroken and still sniffling though he'd lost the energy to cry. He looked tiredly up at Earl and smiled the tired smile of someone who is not happy.

Earl looked sympathetically back. He has a lot less tired in those days. He kind of wanted to kiss Cecil. Maybe Cecil would kiss him back. In that state, he probably would have.

He was really tempted to. It made him feel sick to his stomach and his face feel hot. It made him want to grab Cecil's face and to run out of the room in almost equal measure. It was a wicked, wicked thing he wanted to do to him. Thankfully, he knew that. He knew that and he did not do the wicked thing in his mind, which his hand and his lips tempted him to do, which his unkind heart spurred him towards with unfair promises of what could come of it and what he would gain from Cecil (from Cecil's body).

It was an ugly temptation, and Earl was ashamed that it had ever crossed his mind.

Earl lifted his hand. He was going to put it on Cecil's head to pat his hair. He used to do that because Cecil was shorter than he was. It was a brotherly thing to do. That was what they were. They were like brothers. They were friends. They had been since they were kids, and he said Cecil's name wrong because he'd lost his front baby teeth to a tarantula and couldn't form the the S sound.

Earl took away the half-empty bottle of brandy that was twice as old as he. He put it on the floor and then rested his hand on Cecil's shoulder. Cecil closed his eyes, and Earl understood. One day even his friendship would only be in Cecil's memory, blurry and ignored because of his own selfish temptations until the day would come when he would be rewritten by reality into a completely different person from what he ever set out to be by creatures he never expected could exist. It would be very sudden. He would respect Cecil's friendship a lot more for it. But that was well into the future, inasmuch as time exists.

For now, Earl would order pizza and share it with Cecil, and watch a movie while talking about what an asshole that guy was. The night would be pretty alright despite everything.

― ☾ ―

Who can say if Cecil remembers it? He forgets a lot of things. We all do, eventually.

Earl remembers.


End file.
